ECLIPSE
by Alkaline Lady
Summary: This is an Exalted RPG fanfiction. Kabuki is a courtesan of some renown, years after her adventures with her Exalted companions, she recalls some of the events that have lead to her current standing.


ECLIPSE

Authors Note: This is actually a character background story/college creative writing portfolio assignment that's grown into a bit more than that. The character is one I'm completely in love with, her name is Kabuki and she is an Eclipse character Solar Exalted from the Exalted RPG. Please, comment! I enjoy those:)

The storyteller's tent was cramped and crowded, and the canvas sides did little to block out the incredible smells that drifted through the bazaar like a miasma. The smell of sweat, dung, incense and even wolf-skin inside made it almost unbearable for the occupants, myself included. We insisted that we get our money's worth after parting with a very large opal to hear this man's words. In these absurd times, where the dragons either smiled down on us or smote us where we stood, we all had to have something to cling to, and story-tellers were getting paid well to give us that.

I found myself, the head of the local brothel, in the company of an uncouth North-man, a savage from lands far south of mine who served a heathen god, a monkey faced, long-toed gentleman from the east and even a terrible pirate from the west. We had crept like a cabal through the streets to meet in secret, to hear words of the Scarlet Empress who had been missing for years now. This was a strange lot, a refined courtesan in the company of people who would never be allowed inside the standing room of my place of business, but I realize now that it was the absurdity that made the experience all the more thrilling.

When the storyteller lit his flame-wand and touched it to the candlewick a hush fell over us all, as though we had come across a holy ceremony held by the fair folk. We did nothing but stare at his face, luminous in the dark, as white as his skin was, in dreadful awe as he opened his mouth to speak.

"What have you come here for? A story?" His voice was commanding, even intimidating, and I could hear the murmur of those who had come hear for just that, question themselves yet again.

If they were caught here in this dimly lit tent, in a secluded back alley, it could mean death under the eyes of the dragon-blooded nobles.

"A story, " he said, "is fiction! I tell you, that what I say here tonight, is pure truth." His voice was almost conspiratorial, "The Exalted, the god-killers, are returning."

Another outbreak of outraged murmuring arose like a wave, and with a raised hand, he restored silence over the roaring sea of heads. He spoke blasphemy as though it were the gospels themselves. His heresies were melodic to the down-trodden, and that was everyone who forced themselves to part with an opal.

"The Solars! The Exalted the Dragon-bloods fear the most, they are coming. They sit amongst you as kindred, as friends, and lovers." With that, his eyes traveled to my face, then onto the Northman beside me, and then to the southern woman locking eyes with each until at last his eyes came to rest on a scholarly boy who looked at the man with a look akin to distaste. "You don't believe me then, child?"

"I am a scholar. I believe in facts. If indeed your precious Exalted are coming back, then surely they would not tolerate these Dragon-blooded nobles holding dominion over us." The child said, and child he was, as he had fewer whiskers than a hairless lap-dog.

"They are mortal too, Scholar! You have obviously not read the legends, so I will tell one to you. Hark ye all who came for a story!" He threw up his hands with their massive sleeves, appearing a bit likes wings as he raised them.

"Long ago, the Gods played a game called creation. Taking a gamble they set upon this earth many different peoples, and set them up as though the world were a chess board.

These creatures, mortal as they were, were jealous creatures who only thought to advance their own goals. There were many wars, many banners and many causes to bring these peoples together, to unite them with a common objective beneficial to all parties involved. Out of these unities, there came alliances, and great leaders arose. Things set these great personas of our realms apart from others, their hearts, their very actions caused them to rise above others like beacons toward a shining target.

One such woman, a woman as beloved by the gods as she was feared, was called Atifa. She was a bride of a great god, one who would one day walk among his harem, and claim those who were most faithful.

She was proud, and beautiful, and filled with convictions for her god. She knew that when the day came, she would be amongst his harem.

It was not long after Atifa began her struggles to attain the top of the hierarchy of the god's harem that she was confronted by another of her order, stabbed and nearly killed, all in the name of her beloved. Upon the day of the woman's execution, Atifa could barely contain her grief. Her sister, had tried to kill her, and had justified doing so by proclaiming she loved the god more than her harem sister did.

Why had her God abandoned one of his own? Why pit them against each other when they should love each other as sisters, and seek only to please him? Did the violence satisfy some base need?

Her realization was swift. God's should not have such primal needs. Her back was turned, she knew then that it was all a game. A bloody war with as much carnage and sorrow as it always carried with it was a simple move of a pawn on the board.

Atifa fled the monastery, taking with her only her horse, and the clothes upon her back, and rode long and hard to the north until her horse died beneath her and sent her sprawling into a chasm.

How long she lay there, she didn't know. But when she awoke she found herself in a place forgotten by man, by gods. The weapon that lay before her, made of Chiasciuran glass, unbreakable, and deadly, was crafted long before her time, but resonated with every fibre of her being. When she lifted that blade, she became a warrior, and she vowed to avenge the shame her harem-sister faced at the whim of her god.

Riding forth on her resurrected steed, Atifa Exalted before the eyes of her army, rising to the level of a god killer. She rode up to the gates of heaven itself and sent the god crashing down, and slew him upon the mountain tops with her mighty blade of glass."

"Atifa, as you know, child, was the mother of our Scarlet Empress." The old one, said, very matter-of-factly to the now starry-eyed scholar.

The story-teller had won his audience over then, by convincing a single doubting boy. He gave us hope then, filling us with words that made our hearts dance like the apprentice performers in the square, chaotically and without rhythm and our souls burn with the fire of a thousand suns.

The story-tellers tent was filled with magic that night, and the resonant aura of that magic, in the end had helped us to ascend past our humanity and become the next generation of God Killers.

A year later, the Northman, the southerner, the easterling and the western pirate and I all stood outside the same tent, which now was home to a bunch of squatters. We found that he had been executed after he could not afford to pay the exorbitant fine that came with telling such heresies in the kingdom of the Dragon-blooded. That day was the day we became the true enemies of the Dragon-blooded gods.

Looking back, as I write this with withered hand and shaking quill, I begin to wonder. Had we really Exalted? Did our various ambitions drive us inexorably to that spot, to that moment in our lives where we discovered that to kill a god, it took a creature that took part in their creation? As the only hope of humanity, of all kinds, to destroy those who would lord over us as immortals, I would like to think so, however, there is another idea that I find just as romantic. Perhaps, the story-teller back in that tent had only made us think we could, and riding on the waves of his charismatic exultations we made our way to greatness and inspired confidence in our allies.

I shall start by saying that the years have not been kind to me. I aged at first as any other mortal does, until my Exaltation. Mine is the story I know best, for who better to tell ones own story? Chiascuro, the city of glass, was my birth place and one that could be best described as a city of fishbowls.

Though the number of citizens was always limited, I managed to be one of the privileged few children to be born in Chiascuro that year. My mother was the companion of a dragon-blooded noble who had gained entry into Chiascuro through the venerable grandmother of the city.

I lived in his household as a privileged child, well educated in the ways of verbal debate and learned in both reading and writing. This continued until a few years before I became a woman in the eyes of the community. The dragonblooded lord had obviously made a few enemies over the long years of his life, and in his respected old age, they had decided it was time for payback. One day upon returning from the market, my mother, the Porcelain Butterfly, as they called her stabbed him in the chest while he lay with her in his own bed. She had been paid well for the deed and it would keep our mouths full and both of us clothed and in work for some time after that.

Deciding it was best to flee, the Porcelain Butterfly brought me to Nexus, the most putrid city I have ever encountered in all of my wide wanderings and the next tragedy befell us some years later. We obtained work through the Guild that controlled much of the trade in Nexus, we even made our way into the House of Glass, a reputable brothel of some local renown, and though not much in the way of clientele, again, kept us fed and clothed.

I remember the first day I had gone out onto the streets, wearing little to no make up as my skin was already as pale milk white as my mothers, and my eyes were of such a startling turquoise that it was hard not to notice them and I didn't need kohl to accentuate them. I was dressed in a simple, unrevealing gown of purple, for back then I did not bear the red scars that I do today. I cried my mothers name, and detailed all of her many skills, to lure the arrogant and well dressed patrons from the street.

A man approached me at some length and regarded me with a curious eye as my voice still lilted with the southerns slow but delicately flowing accent, reminiscent of the flames of the south.

He took my luminous white chin in his hand and said to me, "How curious is it that a child of such exquisite beauty should be reduced to selling her mother's wares upon the street" and then let me lead him by the fingers to my mother's room.

Had I known what would transpire years later after accepting his bid to deflower me, I could have and probably would have killed him right there on the street. The fire that burned inside my breast began long before I ever heard the word anathema, and strangely that day it had lain dormant while he had insulted me so eloquently.

I discovered after his brief tryst with my mother that he was indeed the prospective proprietor of the establishment. He would be buying the brothel for the price of one hundred jade coins. It was a very high price to pay, but well worth it because of our renown for our baths, massages and entertainment, even before our reputation as lords and ladies of the night. I could not have been happier for my mother had said that it was because of she and I that he had been so impressed to buy the place. Surely we would be prized among all others.

Mother and I were made to dance together, and no one else was allowed to participate for the only reason that no one looked anything like us. We were alien to everyone, even to the southerners whose region I could name. We were the rare Porcelain Butterflies of the House of Glass.

As I grew older, I gained as many duties and responsibilities as my mother. I made sure all of the girls went to their monthly appointments with the physicians, I organized shopping trips into the small market, I even ran part of the bath-house when private parties were in attendance.

I could turn away nearly any man who asked my services, save only the very wealthy or the noble blooded. I nearly drowned in gifts of silks and jewelry, even inheriting a head-dress made of Chiascuran glass and the horns of a juvenile ibex from the mountains to the north. It was nearly identical to that of my mothers, and when we danced together it made it all the more symmetrical and astonishing to the eyes of those in the audience.

The dragon-blooded nobleman, named Hiro Giru was from the Imperial Region, and was well mannered in the ways of courting a woman, which is probably why he even left my mother dry at the mouth and swooning in his wake. She went to his bed willingly, and I could sometimes here the sounds of ecstasy long into the night. I wondered if maybe I was destined for a similar fate, if maybe I would inherit this place when my mother became Giru's companion.

The day came then, where the symmetry my mother and I shared, the nearly identical features that we had, ended. She was in her room that day, and would not take any business, declining even to dance with me that night, and Giru's runner told me that she would not participate.

I was lonely up there on the stage, tossing my fans made of white feathers of an albino peacock to alluringly cover what little skin was visible after the briefest glimpse. And for once in my life, I felt naked, and truly ashamed that my alabaster hide was the subject of gawking and lust I could see in the eyes of the crowd. After my performance was finished, I dismissed myself from the room, claiming that I felt ill and fled to the confidence of my mothers room.

When I pounded on the delicate doors of her room, I could hear her voice was as filled with tears as mine was, and I became worried for the first time. Even when she croaked at me in a cracked and ragged voice to leave her alone I opened the door and drew it shut quietly. Lying about her were bowls of salve, and of make up, and I saw her with her great wide mirror that usually hung on her wall, lying in her lap, and there were rags covered in make up and in what appeared to be blood.

"Mother!" I cried, and sank to my knees, crawling across the floor to grab her by the shoulders, for she would not face me in such a state, "Mother, look at me!"

"No, Kabuki, I should not want to frighten you."

"Frighten me, mother? Frighten your own daughter, the one who looks as though she could be your twin? Frighten me away?"

As if in some kind of bitter spite, my mother finally turned her face to me, and I realized what exactly it was she was trying to hide. The shallow feelings of shame I'd felt dancing by myself on stage disappeared as I surveyed the horrendous burn that covered about eighty percent of my mothers previously perfect skin.

"Mother…what happened?" I asked calmly, taking a rag from the dish of water beside me.

"Giru and I have had a fight." She replied equally as calm, though a big fat tear eked its way out of her eye.

"A fight?"

"He pushed my face against the flat of the ink plate" she said, almost as though she felt guilty for whatever sin she had committed to deserve that.

I knew what she was talking about too. The writing desk in Giru's quarters had an ink plate with a super-heated stone beneath it to keep the ink liquid. The ink had to be kept at a very high constant temperature so that when it dried it would shine like gold or silver. The dress over in the corner was covered in what looked like liquid silver.

I dipped the rag into a bowl of water I normally reserved for manicuring my mothers nails, it was laced with healing herbs like aloe to keep them soft, but they would serve my purpose just as well. I gently cleaned the burn on her face, and pondered even as I wept with her, that the flesh beneath was so horribly red, like the color of the blood on the rags and that even with the cooling rag that it did not fade.

I cleaned her face up, then took a section of clean cheese-cloth normally used for wrapping food, and laid it across her face like a bandage, and then set about the task of requisitioning the necessary herbs, and even constructed twin masks with opposing colors like a two sided coin, laden with beads and false butterflies and feathers so that we would dance together later.

For weeks I tended my mother until her burn had at last healed over, leaving in it's wake a perfect butterfly design emblazoned in blood red, over her eyes, cheeks and nose. To keep the ruse up, I painted a twin to it upon my own cheeks when we performed, and even sometimes around the House. Most guests thought my mother to be an eccentric who chose to take her title more seriously than normal, but there were a select few girls who knew the truth. That my mother was horribly marred at one point was a moot point. She had disguised it well with my help and she and I were again at the top of the food chain when it came to the House of Glass.

The beatings Mother received did not stop with that incident with the ink plate, but none were as bad or as lasting as the mark he had given her to wear like a mask across her face. She was battered and beaten and scarred with sin, but to me, she was still the Porcelain Butterfly who had killed a man to make sure that there was food in our mouths and clothes on our backs, she was still as majestic a creature as she ever had been.

As I have told a few close friends and comrades, I was born a whore, I cannot change that, however, if I am doomed to walk this earth in a caste of women of the night, I will walk it with such dignity and grace that a noble woman might look upon me and wish she were as beautiful as one such as I. This is the way I felt about my mother, how I still feel about her. I will walk her path with pride, and if I should surpass her in reputation and in deed then it is only because of her that I may do so.

Hiro Giru became unbearable after I finally became a woman in the eyes of the community. My mother came to bed many nights, bruised and almost unable to move, so she was relegated clerical duties, and I took her place when serving the master at his table and when performing for his private guests.

One morning, as I served him his breakfast of fresh fruit brought in on a platter from his garden, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me close, inhaling my smell, then throwing me away as though I were a rag-doll. I couldn't hold the rage from my eyes then, knowing how he mistreated my mother, how he meant to treat me.

"How sad, that such a beautiful and charming creature such as you is diminished to the level of a scullery maid." Giru commented with a sneer, as if my subordinance, though forced, was enough to give him pleasure.

"Truly, Master Giru." I said, picking myself from the floor then, brushing my elegant form fitting dress of turquoise to drape in a horribly provocative manner across my alabaster thigh, pretending to dust myself off.

He rose from his seat, with his wife sitting at the table, head bowed, and the children's nanny's ushering them out of the room. He crossed the room in a few mere strides, and had me against the wall roughly in seconds. His body leaned into mine, his hands on my thighs as he bit my lip angrily, and his steely grey eyes caught my rebellious blue-green ones and he pushed harder, pushing my dress up to my hips without so much as a peep from my lips.

I let my eyes focus on his, and forced my heart to focus on my hatred for him, letting that flame that so angered him rage like an inferno in my gaze as he forced himself upon me, forcing me instead onto the breakfast table, clearing it of any dishes with an arm. I let my head loll to the side limply, only to watch his wife, the woman he married, hang her head in obvious shame, and she wouldn't meet my gaze, not even in anger.

Her heart had been charmed and broken by this man, and most likely bones in the process. I felt pity for her, even as her husband molested me on the same table they ate off of.

I watched as she stood, a fragile shadow of a woman, and demurely set down her napkin, and walked away, the eunuch servant that attended her holding her bruised elbow.

When I returned to the House of Glass my mother was there to hold me as I wept into her dress bitterly, even going so far as to cuddle me as she once used to in the house of that Dragon-Blooded nobleman we had lived with. She sang softly to me, a lullaby that often drifted from the windows of the peasants here in Nexus, only she sang it in the lyrical tongue of the south.

"Fall away ashes, fall away skin…"

I fell asleep there that afternoon, and the rain began shortly after that, purifying my dreams of Hiro Giru pinning me to the table.

I awoke, or at least I thought I did, in a land of flying sand, not unlike Chiascuro, but not in the least bit hot, it was almost as though I had been dipped into a bath that has been left to sit, and it's impossible to tell where skin, water and air divide. I stood there atop a pyramid, and around me there were people I'd never seen before, though for some reason I could never assign them faces, or even races, just what they were.

We stood before an oncoming hoard of creatures that writhed like leeches in a physicians vial. Their flesh constantly shifted and changed as I watched them ooze forth in a gelatinous wave, and I felt myself filled with disgust, then with a wave, the larger of the figures sent a large mass of them flying, dissolving them to dust with a beam of light that shot forth from his brow.

Bolts of light came from the side where a smaller, and somehow more androgynous than the first hurled them from what looked like a bangle. A glow from behind me alerted me to three others, one behind me, two at my sides, and for some reason I felt an astonishing sense of urgency, a dire need to look up.

I could not help but obey the feeling that began between my eyes, and as I looked into the sky, filled with angry black clouds, I searched almost forlornly among the heavens for a meaning, and at once was filled with purpose. The mark upon my forehead blazed with white hot energy that threatened to force me to my knees as it burned upward to the great black void above. I felt a response, akin to the fiery rage seething in my breast when I faced Hiro Giru that morning, however I was calm, and for the first time, I became aware of what I was.

I was anathema. A godkiller, both feared and reviled through the lands, I would be hunted wherever I went if the truth became known. That revelation sent me careening back to my bedroom, where I awoke with a start.

It was early evening, the sun had just about set in the western sky of Nexus, and the smell of chamber pots being emptied before the long wait till sunrise assaulted my nose when I noticed my window had been left open.

I stood, bathed, and dressed myself in the span of a few moments as the sand-timer, or the hour-glass, told me that it was nearly time for my performance with my mother, though I did not have time to paint the red mask upon my face. Instead I grabbed the masks I had constructed for that purpose and went out to dance.

Back stage where my girls sought to dress me in this nights regalia calmly informed me that my mother had sought reconciliation with Hiro Giru, and that neither would be attending this night's dance.

I had gotten used to that, and so, I danced. I poured my soul into the rhythms of the performance, the beat of the drums that I could feel through the very heels of my feet, and the melody that I felt resonate with every fiber of my body. When I was done, a fine sheen of perspiration coated my white skin, making me shine like a pearl, the image made more surreal by the mask adorning my face.

I absorbed the awe-stunned silence with great pleasure, then, one by one I saw my audience stand, and clap. Some threw flowers if they had them, others deposited coins into the hands of their attendants, others just whooped and cheered for me in a deafening roar.

With that, I closed my fans, bowed and exited the stage, swinging my hips alluringly to display the brand of the House of Glass upon my right buttock. The girls undressed me quickly and left me to attend to my clients.

The highest bidder of the evening was an older gentleman but certainly not elderly by any standards. The streak of gray at the human's temple made for a very sophisticated look, and the lines on his face spoke of many smiles and bouts of laughter. I took him by the elbow and led him, serenely to the room where I conducted….private performances. I bowed to him and instructed him quietly to undress and I would be back in a moment.

He seemed rather embarrassed as I slid the door shut however I wasn't in the mood for playing any games tonight. I would not moan or make any loud pleas for anyone tonight, I would be quite frank that most of them either were very bad in bed, or not even worth the money they had paid me. Nothing could soothe this tiger. I was wounded and angry and caged. I wanted to know exactly where my mother was, even if it meant a repeat incident of what happened earlier in the morning.

I stomped into the waiting room, like a thunder cloud, low and ominous, and demanded of the pretty little eunuch boy at the door where my mother was. He indicated a room far down at the end of the hall that was reserved for Hiro Giru himself. I resigned that once my business for the evening had finished I would resolve the matter.

Unlike most nights however, the human man with his sophisticated silver streak, decided that he would prove my earlier generalizations wrong. For once, I actually felt true sensual pleasure and to this day I still remember his face and his name, though I dare not speak it out loud for fear of the consequences to another innocent life.

Instead of letting him leave, for I craved true companionship that night, I begged him to stay. I begged until tears ran down my face and I had sworn to every heathen god that I would not charge him a single penny for my services that night, that he should not consider them even, as services rendered but as a night shared.

Long into the night we clung to one another, and had circumstances been different I might have had the sensibility to push aside my growing concerns to tender to his needs, but it came to pass that we tendered instead to each other, basking in the presence of one another until at last the lights in the place had all winked out save my solitary lamp.

We lay together for a while longer, content to admire each other in the dim flickering light, and to smile at one another. I didn't feel naked with this man, nor did I feel ashamed of my profession. I felt as though this made up for the incident with Giru, that this "counted" for something, made up for the lack that I had with other men that came to me. I was a woman in his eyes, and he had needed my companionship, my company as much as I needed his.

The light finally died out, as we cuddled together, and I finally had to pull away to light it again, and refill the wick, so that he could leave. Before he left, he gave me three gifts.

The first was a token pass bearing his name, and the second, was the money he had bid earlier in the evening. He said that he would rather see that I was not punished for giving him such focused attention. The third and final gift, was a long sweet kiss on the mouth, devoid of any real passion but filled with a different sort of emotion akin to it.

I believe that I fell in love that night, though only moments later my world would come screeching to a halt.


End file.
